Just as curiosity, have you changed feed or vitimins, feeding regimines? It can be amazing what having a little too much or not enough, minerals or vitimins can do to animals. We see problems with certain hay, grain, vitimin feeding programs in young horses. Calcium-Phosphorus balance is the most common. Alfalfa hay skews the Calcium way over, leading to tight tendons, other problems. Many people feed Alfalfa hay, lots of grain, makes for heavy weight on young bones that need different minerals. See a lot of lame young horses from poor feed choices. With the different pig breeds named, I can't point at breeding being the factor. Sometimes you get a line of related animals who have the same problems, so you point at breeding. Don't use that stallion or his relatives again. The other person mentioned a disease. Something that would be passed between pigs or a germ living in the barn, farrowing areas. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me. I am most familiar with horse problems and a couple things happen to bred mares. Rhino that causes abortions coming to mind first. All horses can carry the Rhino bugs, might give them a cold type infection, no big deal to healthy horse. Rhino causes the bred mare to often slip her foal. There is a Rhino vaccination, given at 5-7-9 months. Problem comes when giving the vaccine, because the mare can ALSO abort from the shots! Abortions from shots happen often, not always on the first or second shot either. Just really a heartbreaker to lose a foal that far along. However for the big breeder, multiple mares, they save most of the crop. They also preg check mares, palpate a couple days after shots, to ID any mare who lost a foal. Get her bred back immedialtly. Nobody TELLS the single mare breeder about problems with shot until AFTER foal is lost, "Oh yeah, abortions can happen when you do those shots". Keeping track with acquaintences, they lose more than 50% of foals when giving shots. Pretty high losses. I advise single mare owners to avoid the shots. Few of those mares are exposed to Rhino anyway, not much new horse traffic thru their barn. The other horse thing was feeding fescue grass. With the infected fescue, mare develops a very tough bag tissue holding the foal. Bag also turns red, hence the name Red-Bag Delivery. I think the foals can't get out of the bag quick enough to breath, and those who are helped, still have problems, die. One of the big warnings for bred mare owners, don't feed fescue grass/hay in the last couple months of pregnancy. Those with fescue grass, dry lot the mares in paddocks, feed hay to avoid problems. With the terribly high numbers you are having, perhaps some help is called for. Your vet should be asking questions, call the local State College, get some information coming. It may be your local problem, could be wider spread. Pig problems affect a lot of people, big money loss. When we had swine Cholera locally some years back, the State had teams of people all over the place, IMMEDIATLY. Slapped a bunch of rules into effect, regarding shipping, hygiene, selling, checking before unloading. Our local area had thousands of pigs being raised, was a major feeder pig source. The rules did prevent the spread of the disease, helped restrict the problem and loss of more pigs. You need to make some noise, get some big time help with such a serious problem. The money loss is pretty bad for you right now. Allowing a problem to spread could wipe folks right out of business. Get the vet and some of those experts we all pay for down from the College to help find the root problem, come up with the solution so the pigs are back to normal. My best wishes to you, sure hope the answers come soon.

Its called lapband.they put a band around upper part of stomach,this is the part that tells you its hungry all the time.the stomach goes from like 40 % to 4 %.there is a tube that goes from the band which the band has pockets all around it.Theres a tube that goes to like a button down usually around your navel.Mine is up high because the new kidney they put in will be put in lower stomach.The dr sticks a needle in port with saline to fill the pockets whick tightens the band.If youre losing too fast they pull saline out to loosen.I dont have a whole lot to lose dr agreed because Im getting kidney transplant,I also have thyroid prolems, a friend of mine is getting bypass,shes quite heavy but you cant reverse or control weightloss with bypass ,lapband you can.

Have friend who was redoing her kitchen--she likes blue and for while throught she might try Labrador Blue but much too strong a color to go with the other colors in her open kitchen/breakfast/den... she went with uba tuba green (the verde was too expensive). She has white cabinets and tile flooring and wanted very little movement... she thought about Kashmire Gold but with white cabinets and tile her daughter told her it was too bland... We bought granite to put into house we own and were getting ready to sell...thought with the market so dead 3-4 yrs ago even more than low price having upgraded kitchen and baths would be better selling point... so I picked NVG to go with medium dark oak cabs (original) and a light tan new larger format tiles, and tan walls...they look good but they are not striking...that kitchen as no long runs except for bar counter behind sink and it is not really focal point of kitchen.... thought in THAT kitchen having a strong pattern was more distraction and jumpy look...so went with NVG... in MY house with a long raised counter top behind sink and long island a more dramatic pattern would have been good focal point...but I didn't get to make the choice.... so it is not just what the colors are of the elements...but also the "runs" of the countertops you will have... short, broken runs separated by appliances or cabinets to me says use a less dramatic, more even pattern for several reasons....but I am not kitchen designer or artist... I bet your choice will be great---but I do see your point about building a kitchen around the Lapidus...I loved that pattern when I was shopping...

socks, i guess i never posted about the pigs. i lost both of my females a couple of years ago. they got sick and no matter what the vet and i did, they kept going downhill. ended up having them put down as they were really suffering. vet did a necropsy on one of them and never really came to a definite cause of death. he thinks it was some sort of bacterial infection. last october, both of the boys started having the same symptoms. we did all of the blood work and diagnostics all over again and could find nothing definite. knowing what i was in for after dealing with this already, i opted to put both of the boys to sleep before their suffering got unmanageable. if i had it to do over again, i would have euthanized both girls before they got so very sick. they are all buried out in the big alfalfa field along with 2 horses and several goats. i will no longer have any outside animals. i had even thought about taking the fencing down but gary poured his heart into building it 20+ years ago and i can't bring myself to take it down.